Steve Kornacki

All spring and summer gas prices soared and the debate over energy policy played out on the front pages of newspapers across the country, with the Republicans unquestionably getting the better of it.

They deserve some credit for their strategic craftiness, but they wouldn’t have been nearly as successful in reducing so complicated an issue to the catchy slogan “Drill, baby, drill!” had it not been for the ample cooperation they received from tone-deaf and incoherent Democrats, who first failed to recognize the power of the G.O.P.’s message and then, upon realizing their error, disastrously overcompensated with a slogan of their own – one that they still can’t seem to believe never caught on.  read more »

It wasn’t long ago that all sorts of voices on the right, not to mention from John McCain’s campaign itself, were shrieking about the media’s disproportionate coverage of the two major presidential candidates.

It was an utterly disingenuous ploy. Yes, the press was devoting vastly more ink and airtime to Barack Obama than John McCain, but they were merely feeding the public’s appetite: The guy with the fresh face attracts curiosity, which translates into big audiences and newsstand sales. Some of the coverage was fawning, but much of it was critical and not at all welcomed by the Obama campaign.

And the McCain campaign, for all its outward bluster, was actually quite happy to have such an intense spotlight on Obama, since it offered an opportunity to make the election a referendum on the “risky” Democratic nominee – and not on the last eight years of Republican rule.  read more »

The chaos on Wall Street that exploded over the weekend – and caused to Dow to drop by more than 500 points on Monday alone – is, obviously, bad news for just about everyone. But strictly in terms of the looming election, now fewer than 50 days away, the timing may be something of a gift to Barack Obama and the Democrats, who have watched in bafflement since late August as their once-dominant political position has eroded.

Long before this week, the economy had already emerged as the top issue – by far – on the minds of voters. Now, Americans will be inundated with stories about the potentially devastating fallout from the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the sale of Merrill Lynch and the perilous footing of A.  read more »

Sarah Palin, past proponent of the Bridge to Nowhere, in Golden, Colorado (at her first solo rally) moments ago:

"And that infamous Bridge to Nowhere – I did tell Congress 'thanks, but no thanks,' and that if we wanted a bridge up there, we'd build it ourselves."

One of the consequences of John McCain’s move into a tie, or even into a slight lead, in post-convention polling is the shrinking of the electoral battleground. Gone, probably for good, is the left’s haughty talk about a radical realignment of the electoral map that prevailed in the last two presidential elections. Instead, the same basic red-blue scheme and the same swing states (with perhaps one or two new additions) now seem destined to define a third consecutive election night.

For John McCain, this creates a seemingly simple formula for victory: Hold the Bush states and win. George W. Bush won 271 electoral votes in 2000, a combination of states that would now be worth 277 electoral votes thanks to the reapportionment that followed the 2000 election.  read more »

The first time he ran for president, John McCain basked in the adoration of the reporters covering his campaign, the opinion-shaping pundit class and editorial boards across the country. It won him hordes of independent and Democratic fans, a handful of early primaries and practical banishment from the Republican Party. In other words, the media’s affection made him a beloved and admired loser – but a loser nonetheless.

This time around, mostly because of his hawkish foreign policy and his opportunistic flip-flops (like his decision to kiss “agent of intolerance” Jerry Falwell’s ring back in 2006), McCain has been treated far less reverently by the press – except in one critical way: The portrayal of McCain as unusually honest and principled at his core has persisted.  read more »

Eight years ago, Al Gore, the presidential nominee of the incumbent party, arrived at the Democratic convention a battered candidate, faced with a sizable and stubborn polling gap that had endured for months. He delivered an acceptance speech that was panned for its brevity, hurried pacing and reliance on populist themes strikingly at odds with the moderate image he had spent decades crafting. To political observers, it had been a wasted opportunity.

But the public didn’t see it that way. Almost instantly, George W. Bush’s double-digit advantage was washed away, and for the first time in months, Gore actually tasted the lead. Nor was it some fleeting bounce.  read more »

When Joe Biden and Sarah Palin meet in St. Louis in just over three weeks, it will mark the eighth vice presidential debate in history—and easily the most anticipated since 1984, when Vice President George H. W. Bush squared off with Geraldine Ferraro, the only woman before Palin ever nominated by a major party for national office.

And it is Bush’s conduct immediately before, during and after that Philadelphia debate that ought to provide Biden with a useful tutorial in some very basic don’ts when it comes to competing so publicly with a female opponent.

For instance, do not allow your spouse to tell reporters that your opponent is “a four-million dollar—I can’t say it, but it rhymes with rich.  read more »

In theory, Charlie Gibson has the power to expose Sarah Palin as the fantastically uninformed foreign policy thinker that most Democrats—and, if primed with a healthy dose of truth serum, probably more than a few Republicans—believe her to be.

The ABC newsman, who scored the first of what will surely be scant few major media sit-downs with John McCain’s running mate, could very easily do what a mischievous Boston television reporter did to George W. Bush in 1999 and spring a pop quiz on the unseasoned politician, measuring her knowledge (or lack thereof) of some elementary facts about global hotspots.

There’s no shortage of possible questions that could be asked, and while the ethics and relevancy of playing gotcha would be debated endlessly after the fact, the sight of Mrs.  read more »

Eight years ago, when he first sought the presidency, John McCain presented himself to the country much the way he is presenting himself now—as a battle-scarred American hero who had endured unspeakable physical and mental abuse for his country and who had emerged from it to pursue a life of courageous and principled public service.

Only back then, the Republican establishment, which just spent the last three nights in St. Paul feting him as living shrine to all that is righteous and noble about this country, didn't see him in such glowing terms. They called him a Democratic plant, challenged his heroism narrative, and rallied around—like their lives depended on it—a well-connected son of privilege who had shown exactly zero interest in serving his country in Vietnam, preferring the comparative light-lift of the Texas National Guard.  read more »

One constituency in particular has proven especially fruitful for the Republican Party through the years: Prominent football coaches. For whatever reason - a natural sympathy for autocratic leadership, perhaps? - the G.O.P. has had no shortage of sideline generals to showcase through the years, a tradition that the party will renew tonight when former Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs addresses the convention just before 9:00.

Other well-known coaches who have assumed prominent roles in Republican Party politics through the years include:

* Bud Wilkinson - Led the Oklahoma Sooners to three national titles and 145 victories - including a 47-game winning streak between 1953 and 1957 - before seeking to parlay his in-state popularity into a 1964 U.  read more »

Republicans have spent much of the past week scoffing at claims that Sarah Palin's political experience—which includes six years as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, and 20 months as the governor of the 47th largest state in the union—raises questions about her preparation to lead the United States of America.

In particular, they have played up Palin's "executive experience," calculating that the repetition of this term will lead voters to ignore or overlook the fact that 87 percent of this experience was in a town with a population roughly three times larger than that of a large college dormitory.

"I find it reminiscent when I hear Democrat party leaders and their surrogates questioning Sarah's experience," Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle said at the G.  read more »

Before tonight's proceedings in St. Paul, the venerable National Journal released its latest poll of Republican "insiders," in which several dozen party establishment figures were asked -- with a guarantee of anonymity -- to handicap the 2012 G.O.P. presidential field (contingent on a John McCain defeat this fall).

Their consensus: Mitt Romney is the runaway front-runner, favored by 55 percent, with "nobody" finishing a distant second, at 15 percent. For a party that is fond of anointing an heir apparent years in advance of its nominating contests -- and then ratifying that selection through the primary process -- Romney seemed to be in a commanding situation, roughly where Ronald Reagan was in 1976, George H.  read more »

In the first speech of the 2012 presidential campaign that he's been running since exiting this year's race, Mitt Romney used his convention address to castigate Barack Obama and the Democratic Party as a band of out-of-touch leftists -- part of Romney's ongoing effort to corner the market on the conservative establishment. "Is it liberal or conservative?" he asked over and over near the top of his speech, as he reeled off a list of government failures (at least as perceived by the right), from the lack of off-shore oil-drilling to overly-powerful teachers' unions. After each item, Romney led the crowd in shouting: "It's liberal!"

Which raises the question: Is it liberal or conservative when a Massachusetts politician.  read more »

The main strategic knock on the last night's primetime G.O.P. convention session was its decided lack of red meat-attacks on Barack Obama. Instead, the evening was given over to building John McCain's biography and to framing his campaign as a principled crusade that rises above partisan politics.

Good enough, but with Sarah Palin slated to speak tonight and John McCain on tap for tomorrow night, when will the Republicans showcase the kind of bare-knuckled (and highly effective) attacks on Obama that they directed at John Kerry in New York four years ago?

A look at tonight's schedule and the some of the speech excerpts pre-released this afternoon suggests they will try to kill two birds with one stone this evening.  read more »

Since her selection as John McCain's running-mate was announced last Friday, the media has been "on a mission to destroy" Sarah Palin. That's the charge from McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt, at least, and it's just one of countless over-the-top characterizations from the McCain campaign and its surrogates of the scrutiny Palin has encountered.

On one level, this is standard fare for a Republican nominee. Ever since Richard Nixon framed his candidacy and his presidency as havens for a "silent majority" of Americans who felt condescended to by media elites, press-bashing has been a staple of the G.O.P. playbook, a way to rally the party base against a common enemy and to convince G.  read more »

Sarah Palin may or may not have been the right choice for him, but at least John McCain must be feeling good today about his decision to pass on Mitt Romney as his running-mate.

Romney badly wanted the spot and devoted the last six months—after dropping out of the presidential race in February—to pursuing it, using countless television and radio appearances to trash Barack Obama and herald McCain as an unusually capable, qualified and principled leader.

This posture marked an abrupt shift from his G.O.P. primary strategy (in which he positioned himself as the true conservative and attacked McCain—relentlessly—as a heretic whose nomination would destroy the soul of the party) so much that it prompted a reasonable question: Was Romney interested in helping McCain win in 2008, or just in positioning himself to run again in 2012?

The  read more »

ST. PAUL--Last night, George W. Bush spoke via satellite to the Republican convention for eight and a half minutes—with his speech timed to finish just before the broadcast networks began their blanket coverage of the ten o'clock prime-time hour.

This doesn't compare favorably with the treatment that the other two-term presidents of the television age received at their final conventions.

For comparison's sake, eight and a half minutes also happens to be the length of the above video, which was merely the introduction for Bill Clinton's speech at the 2000 Democratic convention in Los Angeles. When the Clinton video finished, delegates and television viewers (his tribute was carried in the ten o'clock hour) watched footage of the outgoing president making his way through a long hallway to the convention stage, while his various accomplishments scrolled across the bottom of the screen (this particular effect was only for those in convention hall, not on TV).  read more »

Since John McCain sewed up the Republican nomination, it's been obvious that Joe Lieberman - his constant campaign traveling companion and one of his closest personal friends and political allies - would address the G.O.P. convention. What wasn't so obvious was which Joe would show up.

The answer hinged on the outcome of McCain's vice-presidential search. Probably from the beginning, McCain was inclined to tap Lieberman - and as the end of the process approached, it became clear that that's where his heart was.

If McCain had followed through on that instinct, then Lieberman would have shown up in St. Paul ready to spew red meat.  read more »

Jo Ann Davidson, an R.N.C. co-chairwoman and the head of the G.O.P. convention's Committee on Arrangements, offered her perfunctory
welcoming remarks to delegates, in which she praised the ticket of John McCain and "Governor Sarah Pawlenty….Palin."

The first evening session of the Republican convention opened with an invocation from a minister who prayed that America's leaders would put "country first" – which, completely coincidentally, just so happens to be John McCain's campaign slogan and a phrase that is plastered all over the Xcel Energy Center.

After he finished, John Boehner, the House Majority Leader, introduced a tribute to Republican office-holders who have died since the last convention, in 2004. (The Democrats did the same thing at their convention, with a tribute that mistakenly identified the late Eugene McCarthy as Joseph McCarthy.)

The G.O.P. video was appropriately respectful, but the crowd's reaction to the names that flashed on the screen varied widely.  read more »

Why on earth is George W. Bush speaking to the Republican convention tonight? When Hurricane Gustav prompted John McCain to cancel the opening night festivities in St. Paul, it seemed that he’d engineered an enviable political maneuver: coming up with a justifiable excuse to keep the deeply unpopular president – to whom Democrats are frantically trying to link McCain – away from his convention.

Even Republicans happily admitted to being relieved that Bush wouldn’t be participating.

"It's a good thing," Dick Zimmer, the former New Jersey congressman who is mounting an uphill battle against Senator Frank Lautenberg, told the Los Angeles Times. “The first thing I was asked when I won the primary was whether I planned to ask President Bush to come to New Jersey to campaign for me.  read more »

One week ago, just a couple of days into the Democratic National Convention, a number of media outlets declared that Barack Obama had failed to receive a bounce from his selection of Joe Biden and from his convention.

But bounces don't usually happen overnight; they take a few days to develop, especially when a V.P. candidate who was previously unknown to most Americans is involved. So it wasn't exactly surprising when Obama's numbers began ticking up over the last two days of the convention. After his and Biden's acceptance speeches, Gallup's tracking poll showed the Democrats ahead by eight points - easily Obama's best standing in Gallup's poll since clinching the Democratic nomination in June.  read more »

ST. PAUL—The latest word is that Hurricane Gustav has been downgraded to a Category 1 storm and that water levels in New Orleans are receding – strong and encouraging signs that the Crescent City and the rest of the Gulf Coast will be spared tragedy and destruction on the scale of Hurricane Katrina.

And now, at the Republican National Convention, the effort is underway to portray this good news as a triumph of Republican leadership.

Just before 5:00 p.m. (E.S.T.), with the scoreboards in the Xcel Energy Center prominently displaying the words “Country First,” First Lady Laura Bush was called to the stage, where she spoke of the human toll that the storm threatened to exact and the need for support from all Americans for any recovery effort.  read more »

ST. PAUL—Word that Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is five months pregnant was easily the biggest bit of non-Gustav-related news to emerge from the opening day of the Republican convention.

It’s doubtful that this revelation will end up hurting the G.O.P. ticket in the fall—Ms. Palin’s statement made it clear that her daughter plans to keep the child and marry the father, the least politically explosive denouement for such a dicey situation—but it nonetheless seems to confirm a widespread suspicion: Ms. Palin was not thoroughly vetted by John McCain’s team.

Otherwise, this news would not be leaking on the convention’s opening day.  read more »

When Hurricane Katrina came ashore three years ago, initial reports suggested that it had made its way past New Orleans without causing the destruction some had feared. But the storm's aftermath proved unexpectedly catastrophic, with levees unable to hold back the rising waters.

It's worth keeping that example in mind this afternoon, with Hurricane Gustav, downgraded from a Category 3 storm (Katrina's designation) to Category 2 before it came ashore, passing west of New Orleans. It seems possible that the dire forecasts of the weekend – talk of flooding of "biblical" proportions that would wipe out whatever Katrina hadn't – will not be realized.  read more »

Twice in the television era have the pre-scripted proceedings of a national political convention been badly disrupted – and both times it proved catastrophic for the party that put on the show.

In 1968, chaos in the streets and on the floor of the Democrats’ Chicago convention – punctuated by the unforgettable image of Richard Daley shouting epithets at Abraham Ribicoff after the Connecticut senator decried the “Gestapo tactics” of the mayor’s police force – led many Americans to conclude that a party incapable of managing its own affairs shouldn’t be entrusted with the nation’s affairs.

Four years later, similar chaos reigned in Miami Beach, when an endless parade of procedural motions from the floor forced George McGovern’s acceptance speech – perhaps his best chance to win a reevaluation from the millions of voters who’d come to view him as a fringe figure – out of prime time and into the wee hours of the morning, limiting the television audience to a few hard-core shut-ins and insomniacs who might otherwise have been watching infomercials.  read more »

The thinking behind John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin makes sense—on the surface.

No woman has ever been nominated for national office by the G.O.P., so the news will cause a stir, which will help McCain both in the short term—as he tries to deny Barack Obama a meaningful convention bounce—and in the long run, since the 72-year-old McCain has struggled to build excitement and capture headlines.

Plus, Palin is solidly conservative on social issues, so her selection—unlike that of other outside-the-box prospects, like Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge—will sit well with the party base, and perhaps even make the base more motivated.  read more »

On the whole, Barack Obama's broad, aggressive and studiedly unglamorous acceptance speech was a fitting end to a convention that he entered with three major tactical goals: (1) to calm the most restive of Hillary Clinton’s supporters and to make a convincing statement to the press that the wounds of the primary season are on their way to healing; (2) to alter the public’s deeply held and instinctive view of John McCain as a principled warrior-patriot who stands above politics; and (3) to defend himself against the G.O.P.’s charge that he lacks substance and seasoning – and to inoculate himself against the escalation of these attacks at next week’s Republican convention.  read more »

If they had it to do over, it’s a good bet that Barack Obama’s campaign would not have moved the final night of the Democratic convention from a cozy basketball arena to an open-air football stadium.

The change in venue, concocted back in those heady days just after June 3 when every quantitative and qualitative indicator pointed to a sweeping Democratic victory this fall, created the expectation that Obama, a man renowned for his inspirational oratory, would deliver a speech with a scope as expansive as the setting.

But something funny happened between then and now: The media started asking the tough questions that it hadn’t during the primaries and John McCain and his Republican allies began pounding away – day after day – at a caricature of Obama as smooth-talking and substance-less creation of the media, a man who knew how to make a crowd feel good for a few minutes but who hadn’t the first clue how to make their everyday lives better as president.  read more »

What kind of day has Tim Pawlenty had? The kind where your value on the Intrade Republican vice-presidential future markets shoots up by more than 50 points -- while your chief opponent's stock plummets by 31. The Minnesota governor is now trading roughly where Joe Biden was just before word of his selection by Barack Obama broke.

The vice presidential selection process can be like the build-up to a big game. The contestants often look roughly even on paper – one with a particular strength in this area, the other with stand-out credentials in that area – and a reasonable case can be made for either’s superiority. But then you actually get to see them on the same field and immediately realize what a gross mismatch it actually is.

A good example of this in sports is the 2007 college football title game, an even-seeming contest between 12-0 Ohio State and 12-1 Florida that quickly turned into a thorough Gator rout.  read more »

A quick review of the most prominently featured speakers over the first three days of the Democratic convention – which ones helped, which ones hurt, and which ones did neither.  read more »

"Too often the achievements of our opponents go unnoticed," John McCain says in a new video message to Barack Obama, "so I wanted to stop and say congratulations." So, this means that McCain and his campaign won't do anything tonight (say, around 10:30 p.m.) that might step on Obama's moment and make it harder for people to notice his achievement ... right?

Karl Rove apparently phoned Joe Lieberman last week and demanded that he withdraw his name from consideration as John McCain’s running mate, a request that the Connecticut senator ignored. (For what it’s worth, Rove – as is his wont – denies this.) This prompts the question: If McCain ultimately decides not to pick Mitt Romney for VP, might Rove’s intervention be the reason?

Rove has made no secret of his support for Romney as McCain’s VP. He is not alone in this among powerful Republican establishment figures, many of whom (whether openly or quietly) preferred Romney back in the primary season.

But why are they so adamant? A logical explanation: More than usual, this year’s Republican VP nomination is seen as a stepping stone to the 2012 nod – especially if the nod goes to Romney, who already laid a solid groundwork for a ’12 campaign this year.  read more »

Maybe the media outlets that have been pushing the Obama’s-not-getting-a-bounce theme jumped the gun. The latest Gallup daily tracking poll – the result of interviews conducted between Monday and Wednesday nights this week – finds Obama pulling ahead by six points, 48 percent to John McCain's 42 percent. That’s a clear jump for Obama from earlier this week, when Gallup showed John McCain actually edging into the lead by a point.

This is hardly surprising. Convention bounces don’t usually appear until a few days into the convention, or even just after the nominee’s acceptance speech – the idea that polls released earlier this week said anything about whether this convention had been helpful to Obama was rather silly to begin with.  read more »

Joe Biden ran for president this past year and even after giving hundreds of speeches, sitting for countless interviews and participating in more than a dozen televised debates, no one really noticed. He finished at the bottom of the pack in Iowa and dropped out. Half the country had no idea who he was or that he'd even been in the race at all.

Tonight, finally, people noticed. For 30 minutes in prime time, with tens of millions of viewers watching on broadcast and cable television, Biden had the chance to introduce himself, to tell his story and to explain why he's in politics and why he wants to help lead this country – exposure he'd never before had in a political career that has spanned four decades.  read more »

DENVER—You'd really have to strain to see any trace of Bill Clinton's residual primary-season resentments in his ecstatically received convention speech about Barack Obama. For 20 minutes, the former president spoke and, but for a few references to his wife's primary campaign at the very beginning, used his time to talk up Obama and to take on John McCain and the G.O.P.

In particular, Clinton vouched for Obama's national security credentials - his prime vulnerability, the G.O.P.'s eyes - arguing that Obama will work for diplomacy but that "when he cannot convert adversaries into partners, he will stand up to them."

Perhaps more effectively than any other speaker at this convention, Clinton also went after McCain, prefacing his critiques with praise for McCain's heroism and his willingness to stand up to his party on several high-profile issues.  read more »

Only one half of the Democratic ticket is actually set. With this afternoon's acclamation vote, Barack Obama is now officially the party's candidate for president. But Joe Biden, his handpicked running mate, must still win the convention's formal blessing. Technically, the party could go through another time-consuming roll call of the states to nominate Biden, but there's no need for that. Instead, Biden will be nominated just after 10 tonight (after Bill Clinton's speech) by Quincy Lucas, a Delaware woman and domestic violence activist. There will be no seconding speech; to save time, delegates will simply be asked if anyone seconds the nomination -- and hundreds of them will shout back "I do.  read more »

It's been known for months that this convention would officially nominate Barack Obama for president, but never before has there been so much speculation and negotiation about how the mechanics of the vote that would formally anoint the nominee.

In the modern era, the roll call vote -- even in years like 2004, when virtually every delegate arrived at the convention pledged to the same candidate -- has been carefully choreographed with an eye to the general election, with a swing state being selected ahead of time to cast the decisive votes to put the nominee over the top. (To make sure this happens, bigger states are typically asked to pass, thus ensuring that the nominee won't go over the top ahead of schedule.  read more »

For the first time since Jerry Brown in 1992, a candidate other than the party’s presumptive nominee has been formally nominated for president at the Democratic National Convention – and the roll call is now underway.

Brown was nominated in ’92 because it was his only way of securing a speaking slot (Bill Clinton had refused to grant him one unless Brown first endorsed him). Hillary Clinton was nominated today, apparently, as part of a deal with Barack Obama that (in theory) will make her supporters feel they were treated fairly at the convention.

Just before the nominations, Clinton formally released her delegates, freeing them to vote as they pleased.  read more »

Obama wants Israel destroyed, apparently!

With Bill Clinton scheduled to speak shortly before Joe Biden tonight, it seems a logical question to ask: Will the former president upstage the party's vice-presidential nominee?

This is no small concern for Democrats, since Biden's speech is crucial on two levels. For one, Biden - even though he ran for president this year and has been a staple on Sunday morning newsmaker shows for years - is unknown to tens of millions of voters. A primetime speech carried live by every broadcast network and cable news channel represents his best chance to lock in a favorable impression with these voters. Plus, his speech  read more »

Hillary Clinton will be formally nominated and a traditional roll call vote will proceed when the convention is called to order at 5:00 p.m. Eastern time this afternoon, according to the podium schedule issued by the Democratic National Committee today.

Nominating and seconding speeches for Clinton will be delivered first, followed by two speeches for Barack Obama. The schedule doesn't say who will deliver the speeches. (Often, nominating speeches are delivered by high-profile figures–-Mario Cuomo formally nominated Bill Clinton in 1992, and Clinton himself nominated Michael Dukakis in 1988--a speech most famous for the crowd's gleeful reaction when the long-winded Clinton finally said, "In conclusion…")

After they are nominated, a roll call vote will proceed, but whether every state will be called is unclear.  read more »

As a public speaker, Hillary Clinton tends to sound like she’s reading the words in front of her much more than she’s feeling them. She’s hardly unique in this way, but the absence of overt emotion from her delivery and body language makes it inviting for skeptics to question whether she really meant what she just said.

So it is that the convention speech she delivered on Tuesday night, the subject of a level of build-up and anticipation usually reserved for the Super Bowl, amounts to a rhetorical Rorschach test – viewers most likely heard what they wanted to hear.

(FOX's raw transcript of the speech is  read more »

Line from Hillary Clinton's convention speech as prepared: "Those are the reasons I ran for president. Those are the reasons I support Barack Obama. And those are the reasons you should too."

Line as delivered by Hillary Clinton: "Those are the reasons I ran for president. Those are the reasons I support Barack Obama for president."

As in 2004, the three broadcast networks ignored the keynote address at the Democratic nomination, sticking with their usual prime-time entertainment line-ups in the 9:00 to 10:00 hour.

That created an extra challenge for Mark Warner, this year's keynote speaker, to make his address so compelling that the networks would end up talking about it and running clips from it anyway. That's what Barack Obama did as the keynoter the last time around, marking the first time in modern convention history that the most memorable speech of the entire week was delivered to such a small television audience.

That was probably an unfair and maybe even impossible standard for Warner to meet - and not surprisingly, he didn't meet it.  read more »

Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano noted at the top of her speech that three previous presidential candidates from her home state - Barry Goldwater, Morris Udall, and Bruce Babbitt - were all unsuccessful in their efforts.

"Speaking for myself, and at least for this coming election, this is one Arizona tradition I'd like to see continue," she said.

Not a bad line. Of course, the track record for presidential candidates from Barack Obama's Illinois isn't much better than for those from John McCain's Arizona:

* Adlai Stevenson twice served as the Democratic presidential nominee, suffering lopsided defeats to Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 (442-89 in the Electoral College) and 1956 (by a 457-73 spread).  read more »

DENVER—Barbara Boxer just spoke to the convention, one of eight female Democratic senators (none of them named Hillary Clinton) to offer brief remarks. (This parade of women was introduced with a video message from Clinton.) Boxer spoke optimistically about the party’s prospects this fall, both in the presidential race and in Senate contests.

“When it comes to the United States Senate,” she said, “60 is the new 50.”

But if Democrats do make major gains this year, it could complicate Boxer's own political future.

Boxer, who was first elected in 1992 (“The year of the woman”), next faces California voters in 2010.  read more »

Just moments ago, a tribute to prominent Democrats who have died since the 2004 convention was screened at the Pepsi Center. With somber music in the background, the names and faces of the departed were presented for a few seconds each in a kind of slideshow. (The same thing is done at the Academy Awards every year.)

It was a thoroughly respectful salute – until it was Eugene McCarthy’s turn. Or, as he was labeled in the slideshow, “Joseph McCarthy.”

Despite sharing a last name, Eugene Joseph McCarthy and Joseph Raymond McCarthy were very different men.

Just to clear things up: Gene McCarthy was a Democratic Senator from Minnesota who was good friends with poet Robert Lowell and whose 1968 presidential campaign channeled frustration with the Vietnam War and forced Lyndon Johnson to abandon his re-election hopes.  read more »